Law of Survival (20 page)

Jani moved on to the bathroom, which, like the sitting room, contained very little of its occupant. The shelf above the sink held only a stack of dispo cups and a toiletry kit. She unclasped the kit and rummaged through the compartments.
Shaver…soaps…hairwash…toothbrush…

She probed the innermost pocket, flinching as her fingernail struck something hard. She pushed further, looping her finger around the small, stone-like object and pulling it out into the light.

Red and blue painted clothes reflected as though still wet. A tiny face, its eyes closed in sleep. The missing piece from the matryoshka. The innermost one.

The baby.
Jani examined the tiny figure, on distracted lookout for any grooves or pinholes into which a bug could have been inserted. She skirted around any thoughts as to what the presence of the doll in Lucien's kit
meant
—that was the sort of question to toss at Dolly or Frances.
He put it here for me to find.
She held that thought close as she stuffed the doll back in its recess and set the bag back on the shelf, then scanned the bathroom as she had the sitting room.

The bedroom, to Jani's complete lack of surprise, was the one place where Lucien let his personality show. Instead of standard issue white polycottons, he'd made his bed with silk-like linens in the same rich, chocolate shade as his eyes. His pillows were overlarge and encased in paisley-patterned covers of burgundy, brown, and dark blue. Jani scanned them, then commenced a hand-search. She probed under one pillow, then inside the case itself. Her hand closed around something silky.

“What the hell…?” She pulled out a favorite bandbra that she had given up for lost a month before. It had been laundered and carefully folded, and exuded the peppery aroma of an expensive cologne. She stared at it, her mind stalling as it did over the doll.
He…wanted me to find this.
It was the only reason that made sense. She tucked the bra back where she found it, then continued her exploration. She
found nothing else of note, except for a few long strands of red hair.

She scanned the closet with its neat row of uniforms, the walls and fixtures. She then moved on to the dresser, which proved as sparsely decorated as the desk. Sparse, yes, but oh so tasteful. A brush-comb set in heavy sterling silver. A catch-all dish of antique china. A head and shoulders portrait of a young boy, framed in silver and leaning against the mirror.

Jani picked up the sketch. The boy appeared in his early teens, androgynous beauty just beginning to segue into masculine handsomeness. He wore an open-necked white shirt. His silver-blond hair fluttered in the artist's breeze.

“Portrait of the lieutenant as a young man.” Jani pondered the familiar line of jaw and chin, then set the picture down and turned her attention to the drawers. There were three of them—she tugged open the top one.

Uh…huh
. She lifted out a weighty silk scarf adorned with the bold scrollery popular with the Family women she had seen in her building.
I'll bet my 'pack this once belonged to Anais.
Several more bandbras and a couple of men's T-shirts, all laundered and scented.

Jani sorted and counted. Eight items in all, belonging to six women and two men. She wondered absently whether the redhead rated a souvenir, or if she hadn't yet worked her way into that special category.
And then there's me.
She wondered what she had done to rate the pillowcase of honor.

The next drawer contained a more mundane assortment—Lucien's underwear, socks, and gymwear.

Jani pulled at the bottom drawer, then pulled again. Repositioned her hands and yanked hard, without success. She set down her briefbag, crossed her legs at the ankle, and lowered to the floor. Tried to remove the drawer above to see if she could go in over the top, and found that one fastened to the runners in such a way that she'd need a metal saw to hack it out.

“This drawer, you lock. Why?” A snatch of childhood story surfaced in her memory. In it, the husband told his new bride, “You may open every door in the house but this one.”

“And we know what she did, don't we?” Jani dragged her bag onto her lap. She pulled on a pair of dispo gloves, the sort she wore to keep skin oils from contacting delicate paper. She didn't care that she had left hair, skin, and fingerprints throughout the suite. She and Lucien had been seen together around Sheridan, and it would be his word against hers that she had never before visited his rooms. However, she hadn't yet left anything in a place no one would expect, and while her hair and skin cells could waft about and wind up anywhere, her prints would stay where they were put.

Gloves in place, she searched through her miscellaneous tools for a suitable pry, and uncovered a knife that she used to open particularly stubborn envelopes. “Yes, Lucien, I'm playing into your hands. I'm doing just what you want me to do. Well, you can needle me about it later.” She stood, pulled the dresser away from the wall, and wedged the blade into the paper-thin gap where the dresser's back panel met the frame. Trying to lockpick or pry open the drawer from the front would have taken hours and tools and devices she didn't have. Besides, the drawer fronts were too thick and well protected, while the rear panel usually proved, as in this case, to be only a thin sheet of poly.
They never expect you to go through the back.
That lapse of judgment on the part of the furniture manufacturers of the Commonwealth had served her well for many years.

It took her thirty-two minutes to pry the side of the panel away from the frame to the point that she could fit her hand through the gap. She walked around to the front of the dresser, pulled out the drawer above the locked drawer as far as it could go, then returned to the rear. As it turned out, the drawers were separated by more thin layers of poly. An inconvenience, but not an insurmountable one. Jani wedged her knife into a corner and pried some more—after a few minutes, she had freed the edge sufficiently that with the help of a stylus-light, she could see into the locked drawer's interior.

She had to lie on her stomach and prop herself up on her elbows to see into the tight space. Her lower back cramped as
she boosted her torso; the points of her elbows ached from supporting her weight. She flicked the light beam between tight and wide angle—tight was brighter, but wide illuminated a larger space. She had no idea what to expect. More valuable gifts? A long shooter, broken down into easily stored sections? Sex toys bizarre enough for even Lucien to hide?

Instead of any of those, she found…an arrangement. Neat rows of folded cloths, either napkins or scarfs, lined the bottom of the drawer. Centered atop most of the squares were small objects: a shot glass, a marker disc of the type handed out by casinos, a stylus, a small hairclip, and other items, their only commonality their small size and their ordinariness.

Jani counted. Lucien had folded twenty-four small squares, of which fifteen held objects. She tried to push her hand into the small breach so she could reach the casino marker, the closest object in the strange collection. Failing that, she crawled around the front for her bag and mined for the long-blade forceps she used to pick up delicate documents.

It was an easy pickup. She'd had practice at that sort of thing.

Jani stood up. Uncricked her back. Pocketed the marker. Smoothed the poly separator back into place and straightened the rear panel until only a minor bend at the corner betrayed her invasion.

He'll know.
But that had been the point of the entire game, hadn't it? He'd know she looked, and he'd know she knew.
That he keeps souvenirs.
Of his special sexual conquests.
And other…events in his life.
Whatever they were.

Jani pushed the dresser back against the wall. Gathered her bag. Did one final sweep to make sure things looked as they had when she entered.

The front door opened for her, releasing her into the quiet of the hallway, negating her concern about reverse alarms. Three halls, three turns. The lift down to the mezzanine. The lobby, and the sounds of football matches. Outside, and the bright sun, cool breeze, and the bump and jostle of normal life.

Her nerves nipped at her—she braved the long hike to the Shenandoah Gate to dull their edge. She felt the casino marker in her pocket, weightless yet leaden, filled with information that she had always known existed, but hadn't needed until now.

Tsecha leafed through the latest Council reports transmitted from Shèrá, combing through the phrases for his name. He did not see it, of course. Unless his workstation search of the machine versions of the documents had faltered badly, he did not expect to.
But I look anyway.
Because he had nothing else to do. Because he felt well on the Way to madness, and the turning of pages calmed his disjointed mind.

After he finished reading exactly three pages, he looked up to the timeform on his work table and counted backward, converting to humanish chronography as he did so.
Five hours since the sunrise.
Five hours since Dathim had departed for the Exterior Ministry to search for the most propitious place to lay his tile. Among other things.

Tsecha once more forced his gaze upon the Council report. After three more pages, he would look at the timeform again, count backward again, convert time again. He felt this pattern served him best. If he looked at the timeform more often, it appeared as though no interval had passed at all, as though all was
now
and nothing had happened. If he checked it less often…well, he could not check it less often.
Then I would go mad, and truly.

He pressed his sleeve to his mouth to stifle an unseemly yawn. He had not slept. His encounter with Dathim had agitated and thrilled him. He had passed the night staring at his ceiling and remembering Rauta Shèràa during that final Laumrau season. The nights, long and sleepless as the one he had just spent, when he and his Hansen plotted and planned and searched the humanish enclave for his missing Jani.

Unfortunately, we did not find her.
But they had battled John Shroud, for whom lies and deceit were as speaking and breathing, and to win that bout would have been most difficult. He and Hansen had no assistance, no information—the Consulate preferred to believe his Jani dead, therefore dead she was.

It seemed as though I fought only humanish then.
His own Vynshàrau, he had not counted as adversary until the war's end.
Then when our time came, I fought them as they were meant to be fought.
Openly, with well-tuned argument and honorable disputation, not with the stealing of documents, the plundering of offices and laboratories, the treachery, and the lies. He and his many esteemed enemies would all have preferred to be slaughtered in the streets as the Laum had been rather than to stoop to such behavior in the sacred halls of Temple.

Now it appeared the time had changed, and with that change came confusion and difficulty in believing what had happened.
It was much easier to do this subterfuge when I was the only one who knew how.
Now everyone possessed such knowledge, from the Oligarch to the Haárin.
And I am left behind.

Three more pages. Another evaluation of the timeform.

Tsecha leaned back in his chair. He felt the frame stab him in the usual places, the sole constancy in his life over the last days.
What do you do now, Dathim?
Which room did he stand in? Whose desk did he search?
Where did you learn such things?
Who had served as his Hansen, his teacher?

Three more pages. After he assessed time's passage, he paused to watch the shadows commence their meander across his wall. A worthless exercise, and truly. Most appropriate to his new station at the embassy.

“NìRau?”

Tsecha twisted in his chair, gouging himself in the side.

Sànalàn stood in the entry. She wore an informal overshirt and floor-length skirt in the color of wet sand, which meant she had been about the business of the altar room.

“The altar cloths should be changed. I have brought these for your approval.” She stepped into the workroom and ex
tended her arm, over which she'd draped several folded oblongs of brown and dull green. The cloths had been freshly laundered, the hems newly rolled. Hem-rolling was a tedious duty, and as such allowed for contemplation.

Ah.
Tsecha took the top cloth from the pile and pretended to examine it as he awaited the outcome of Sànalàn's meditation. She offered no formal indication that she wished to discuss something with him. But she had been his assumptive daughter and suborn since Aeri's death, and he had long ago learned to recognize her informal signs. “These are most sound, nìa, and truly.” He handed the cloth back to her, and waited.

Sànalàn took the cloth and slapped it atop the pile. She then stood as though captured in place, as though a serpent crawled past her and she dared not move until it had passed.

Tsecha glanced back at his timeform. Dathim would no doubt spend most of the day at Exterior. Perhaps until sunset, or even beyond. This meant that Tsecha could offer Sànalàn as much time as she needed to discuss her meditations.

“We must speak, nìRau.”

And so it began.

Tsecha closed the cover of the Council report. “Yes, nìa.” He stood and walked to his window, which looked out over the embassy grounds, landscaped with the grasses and shrubs of Shèrá. “Say what you will.” He fixed his gaze on what little of his homeworld that he recognized, and waited.

“You have stated repeatedly before idomeni and humanish that I am not to succeed you.” Sànalàn's voice emerged level, with none of the elevated tones or inflections of supplication. “I have spoken of this with nìaRauta Shai. She tells me I should not be concerned, that I am your suborn by ordination of Temple and Council, and that more than your word is needed to remove me from this station.”

Tsecha turned his hands palms-up and raised them to waist level, a gesture of profound agreement. “Such is true, nìa.” He rounded his shoulders, but only by the smallest deviation from vertical. A hint of displeasure to come, rather than a warning of existing anger. “But you should consider that a suborn requires the complete confidence of her dominant in order to train effectively. You should also consider
that, after the events of these last days, such confidence no longer exists.”

“Did it ever?”

Tsecha turned to find Sànalàn standing beside his work table, one hand gripping the edge as though she needed support to stand. “For as long as I remember, you searched for her. From the time I first studied the scrolls and laved the altar stones, I listened to you talk of her to friends and enemies alike as though she served you and not me. I wondered for so long who this Kilian was, this strange humanish that you felt merited your place. Then I learned.” She released her hold on the table, standing still and silent as though she needed to regain her balance. Then she pulled the cloths one by one from her arm and stacked them atop one another on the table.

After she finishes, she will pick them up, one by one, and place them again across her arm.
Such actions, Tsecha knew as he knew his robes and his rings. “You learned only what Cèel and Shai wished you to know, nìa, that my Jani slaughtered the Laumrau as they took sacrament. They left it to me to tell you of the betrayal of our Way by the Laumrau, and the treachery of Rikart Neumann. By then, it was too late. Cèel's half-truths suited your ambitions better, thus you preferred them.”

“My
ambitions
?” Sànalàn's voice deepened as her shoulders rounded. “I did not choose to serve as your suborn, nìRau, I was chosen. As was my body-father. As were you. As are all who serve the gods. We are given no choice.” She clenched the topmost cloth she held, crumpling it as paper. “The gods marked me, nìRau, by birth and examination. Are you maintaining that they did not know what they did? Are you saying that you know better than they who should serve them?”

Tsecha turned away so that he could not see Sànalàn's posture. Only if he ignored her form and concentrated on her words could he divorce her from his memories of her youth, when she argued with him over lessons and made him laugh. When she spoke in ways that brought back her body-father. When he had esteemed her.
You have come here to betray me, nìa, to make me utter blasphemies that you can report to
Shai.

“You must provide me an answer, nìRau.” The voice, stripped of respectful inflection, goaded him. “I am deserving of one, and truly.”

The ground cover outside Tsecha's window captured the sunlight and returned a blaze of blue.
My Jani warned us all of the Sìah, and your love of rules. Now you will punish me for breaking rules by causing me to break more.
“You would perform adequately as Chief Propitiator if times were as normal, nìa. I have no doubts in that regard.” Tsecha remained focused on the view out his window. “But as we change, as the times become not normal, adequacy will not serve. We will need the strength of one who knows how to fight, who knows death, who knows…loyalty.” He heard a roaring in his head, as he had on the night Aeri died. The Laumrau had bombed the Temple, and all Vynshà knew that the next battles would attain a level unlike any ever fought by idomeni. “Even as she acts as toxin, even as she brings pain and change, my Jani protects those she calls her own.” He offered silent prayer, and turned to face his traitor.
You may deny your truth in order to save it. I am Vynshàrau, and I would sooner die than corrupt it so.
“I predict great change, and with it, great pain. Those who claim my Jani as their dominant will need the protection that only she can give.”

Sànalàn had once more gripped the edge of the work table, but whether she did so out of anger or fear for the steps she took, she did not make clear by her posture or gesture. “You deny the will of the gods?”

“I interpret what I believe their will to be. Cèel and Shai deny my interpretation because it does not suit their beliefs. They defer to me as propitiator, yet deny me the right to act as is my duty. So humanish are they in their conflict between words and actions, it is as though they have already hybridized.” Tsecha savored the anger that leached into his words, and rounded his shoulders fully in gratifying announcement of the emotion. He wished his Jani in the room, so he could hear her yell at him to wait until it is safe.
It will never be safe, nìa. It will only…be.

“You dishonor the Oligarch and his suborn with your words. You spread disorder as the winds strew sand.” Sà
nalàn's own posture bowed to match his. “I should challenge you.”

“Yes, nìa. You should.” Tsecha fought back the impulse to shout aloud in joy. Only a little while before, he sat at his work table contemplating shadows.
And now I have this glorious declaration!
“But before you do so, consider the certain result. Consider that never in the history of the Vynshà Temple have declared enemies served as chief and suborn propitiator. Chained by tradition as Cèel is, do you believe and truly that he would allow such a thing?”

“Cèel is not so chained, nìRau.” Sànalàn straightened in respect as she uttered the Oligarch's name. “He is the one who commands us to act as walls before the humanish—it is
you
who seek to shackle us by your interpretations of tradition. To scare us with your talk of hybridization, when we all know the blending will never be!” She bowed her shoulders again, in a hunch only possible in one so young. “You are disorderly! You are unseemly! I do challenge you!”

Tsecha could hear Hansen's voice in his head.
You get them where you want them, and then “Gotcha!”
Hansen spoke of the Consulate humanish, of course, but if idomeni were determined to behave as such, let them learn what it meant. “You must petition your dominant for the right to offer challenge.” He slumped in grave dignity. “Do you petition me, nìa?”

Sànalàn's spine wavered as a young tree in the wind. “Yes, nìRau, I do petition you.” Her voice lilted with uncertainty as the gravity of her action bore upon her.

Tsecha nodded in humanish nothingness. “Petition is conveyed. Right is granted. Challenge is accepted. Which of us will inform Suborn Oligarch Shai, nìa?”

The joy of challenge left Sànalàn's posture. Her left arm crossed over her soul in dismay.
“NìRau?”

“Yes, nìa?” Tsecha bared his teeth.

“NìaRauta Shai will take no joy in this!”

“You are quite correct in that, nìa, and truly.” He tried to imagine his Jani's reaction when she heard of what had transpired and felt his own soul clench, for his Jani scared him more than Shai ever did. “You have taken steps against me
that no other suborn has ever taken against their dominant. In your fear of change, you have changed beyond belief.”

Sànalàn's arm dropped to her side as her anger revived. “It is your Kilian's fault! I do this because of her!”

My toxin.
“Yes, nìa. So you do.” He jerked his shoulders in a maddening humanish shrug. “So do I.” He turned away from his newest enemy toward the blue lawns of home. “So do we all.”

 

“This is a desecration and a denigration! This is anathema!” Shai paced before her work table, a humanish trait that she had acquired during the War. “This cannot be!”

“Challenge cannot be retracted after it is accepted by the challenged, Shai.” Tsecha stood in solitary censure in the middle of the Suborn Oligarch's private workroom. Sànalàn had long since been escorted to her rooms by Diplomatic Suborn Inèa, who had pledged to serve as her support, much to Shai's consternation.

“You knew this would happen, Tsecha.” Shai lapsed into the short sentences and truncated gestures of Low Vynshàrau, as was her habit when angered. “She is as youngish, and your constant public declarations of Kilian have dishonored her. She sought to discuss the matter with you, and you lured her into the worst show of disunity that we have ever displayed!”

“You sent her to trap me into blasphemy. Your attempt failed. See the price of failure when you play as humanish?” Tsecha pressed a hand to the point where his left leg met his hip, and winced. “I am sitting down, Shai.” He limped to a low seat set against the wall opposite Shai's desk.